The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

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passions.” (Ibid, p.27) Zimmermann spends several pages of the book highlighting the many attacks on the arts that, combined with a neoliberal economic philosophy that has privatization at its core, are tearing at a public fabric. (Zimmermann, 2000, p. xvii) She writes that “anything public…is auctioned off like suburban real estate to private enterprise. <strong>The</strong> collective and the public have shrunk into the individual and the private.” (Ibid) To combat this profit-based force of socio-political and economic consolidation, Zimmermann argues for increased support for the media arts, especially independent political documentaries: Because they are associated with disruptive, polemical ideas rather than more neutral affirmations of higher aesthetic and less localized sensibilities, media arts, especially documentary, engage a political volatility and national instability of public space that conservatives want to defuse and derail. (Zimmermann, 2000, p.35) This “new cartography” is the second discursive space that my thesis interrogates (the first being Canadian film industry/policy and the counter-position of documentary cinema practices). Together, the mapping out of grassroots documentary distribution/exhibition practices and the links to the larger area of social movements around public space, democratic media and anti-neoliberalism constitute an effort to oppose the hegemony of neoliberal economic and cultural policies, with a focus on documentary cinema. Pierre Bourdieu writes that neoliberalism has established itself as a dominant discourse through sustained intervention by media-makers and intellects as a “whole labour of symbolic inculcation…[that puts forward] presuppositions of…maximum growth, competitiveness and productivity” (1998, p. 29,30) that ultimately leads to privatization, commercialization and consolidation of the media into the hands of a few elites. In concert with Bourdieu’s assertion is an active strain of research and writing that 16
examines and exposes these phenomena. (Bagdikian, 1987, p. xvi; McChesney, 1999b, 1999a; Hackett, 2000; Thussu, 2000, p.5; Langlois and Dubois, 2005, p.10; McPhail, 2006, p.59) Bourdieu, like Mouffe, Rodriguez and others, feels that researchers have a role to play in resisting neoliberalism in all its forms against all its fronts. He writes: Against this doxa, one has to try to defend oneself, I believe, by analyzing it and trying to understand the mechanisms through which it is produced and imposed. But that is not enough, although it is important, and there are a certain number of empirical observations that can be brought forward to counter it. (1998, p. 31) Across the Atlantic from France, the Canadian state continues to embrace neoliberal economic models to shape policy (Carroll and Shaw, 2001) so rigorously it has the attention of British scholars, like Colin Leys, who tacitly warns other states not to follow the Canadian example: “How far other states will be induced to surrender their sovereignty to Transnational Corporations in as wholesale and humiliating a way as Canada and Mexico have done under NAFTA remains to be seen.” (Leys, 2001, p.21) To understand the forces of such an ubiquitous, hegemonic ideology, and how to defend against, it is also important to analyze and investigate the very defensive measures exacted, such are often the spaces of grassroots documentary distribution and exhibition. A central argument of this thesis is that it is equally relevant for academics to focus research efforts on grassroots/alternative media practices as it is to interrogate commercial or ‘mainstream’ practices. Research contributions that examine grassroots/alternative media practices have the great opportunity to contribute not only to the academy, but also to the various ‘social movements’ the studies seek to understand and interrogate. Contemporary scholars like Clemencia Rodriguez, Chantal Mouffe, Dorothy Kidd, and the contributing writers to Sociology for Changing the World have 17
Page 1 and 2: The Spaces Between Grassroots Docum
Page 3 and 4: iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis wou
Page 5 and 6: CHAPTER I HOT DOCUMENTARIES IN COOL
Page 7 and 8: p.167) Yet what brings Wintonick an
Page 9 and 10: Complimenting the celebration of ex
Page 11 and 12: somewhere. Documentaries make up a
Page 13 and 14: ealm of the marginalized, and furth
Page 15 and 16: short, there is a clear and urgent
Page 17 and 18: discussion and treats them as unnat
Page 19: content” (Ibid, p.3) reminiscent
Page 23 and 24: some years working as an activist a
Page 25 and 26: grassroots distribution and exhibit
Page 27 and 28: the discursive and physical multipl
Page 29 and 30: attention in some areas, such as te
Page 31 and 32: writes: “The strongest barrier to
Page 33 and 34: its heyday 4 . Stuart Hall, Richard
Page 35 and 36: large multinational corporations wh
Page 37 and 38: it is a complex process of negotiat
Page 39 and 40: globally harmonized by a populist c
Page 41 and 42: (counterpublics) - such is the way
Page 43 and 44: She is concerned with the counter-h
Page 45 and 46: operating with an assumption that t
Page 47 and 48: film through the public sphere.”
Page 49 and 50: commercial exhibition sites, and fu
Page 51 and 52: adicalizing opposition or counterpo
Page 53 and 54: screenings can provide opportunity
Page 55 and 56: authors have chosen to survey the g
Page 57 and 58: demonstrative examples of the acade
Page 59 and 60: conflict(s) as a core of contestati
Page 61 and 62: consumer-over-citizen modeled (Mouf
Page 63 and 64: CHAPTER III - HISTORICAL CONTEXT -
Page 65 and 66: vis the ‘work’ of politicians,
Page 67 and 68: These authors are introducing the t
Page 69 and 70: articulations that illustrate the i
Page 71 and 72:
indexes is a revealing exercise, in
Page 73 and 74:
the lens of inequity, where cultura
Page 75 and 76:
of the 20 th Century, was the agent
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As mentioned, d/e has been at the h
Page 79 and 80:
the urban counterpart to the film c
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artist-driven and dedicates itself
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spaces and practices that this thes
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formations (in Dorland’s case) or
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irrelevancy. The social movements s
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in communities for citizen’s acti
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for CFC works was remarkably relaxe
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of documentary - on the oppression
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scholar concerned with progressive
Page 97 and 98:
film industry, while texts that beg
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Montreal-based non-profit übercult
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cinemas, where managers and program
Page 103 and 104:
journalist still stationed in Haiti
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You are on Indian Land and Mike Mit
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Achbar settled down on to the grass
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the report continues, the authors a
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of grassroots I think of an organiz
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spaces through grassroots practices
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Haynes quickly realized there was a
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documentaries in Canada. Haynes add
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people experience the screenings, a
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like Charlottetown, PEI. The initia
Page 123 and 124:
Canadian, and is doing it by way of
Page 125 and 126:
community members who make up the K
Page 127 and 128:
That said, AMC is paying more atten
Page 129 and 130:
example, Achbar relates to me that
Page 131 and 132:
consumers. What I have argued in th
Page 133 and 134:
dominant veneers in culture, so tha
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that build counterpublics with the
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Nos voisons les hommes (USA - Over
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APPENDIX B Sample Interview Questio
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I HAVE CAREFULLY STUDIED THE ABOVE
Page 143 and 144:
Beetham, David. Democracy: A Beginn
Page 145 and 146:
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from C
Page 147 and 148:
Magder, Ted. Canada’s Hollywood:
Page 149 and 150:
Rennie, Ellie. Community Media: A G
Page 151 and 152:
Yudice, George. “The Privatizatio
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